The French Reconnaissance: Baudin in Australia 1801-1803 by Frank Horner

Book Description

Secondhand. Good condition. Ex library copy with no external stickers. Stamps and stickers on inside pages. Wear to book corners and edges. Pages are sunned. Marks on right foredge. Dust jacket is in very good ocndition with only light wear. Book is in a non-adhesive protective cover.

Few navigators have had such a bad press as Nicolas Baudin: the official account of his major voyage, published after his death, is nothing less than a sustained character assassination, and it set the tone for nearly a century and a half. The picture presented by the expedition's naturalist, Francois Peron, was of an unbalanced man, harsh to the point of cruelty, capricious and tyrannical, willing to abandon his people on barren, unknown shores, and so stupidly incompetent as a seaman.

Yet this inept bully carried through a most arduous three years' voyage without grounding his ship, and in his correspondence with Governor King of New South Wales, showed himself capable of firmness allied with the most remarkable tact. (Foreword)

The resolution of this paradox is the theme of Frank Horner's book.